i've never so much as brushed the nettle! or gazed upon the nettle! (gladly, though — itching is second only to literal burning on my list of intolerable physical sensations; i was ready to skin myself a week after my first brush with poison ivy.

oh, i wouldn't want to see a decline in comments either, rolig! i know exactly what you mean. i saw keeping notes private primarily as a way to draw as clear as possible a distiction between their purpose and that of comments (thus avoiding comments on a word-note being left on someone's list when they'd be more appropriate on the word's respective page, etc.), making them less likely to be seen as commenting replacements. a simple reminder to that effect beside the input box ("notes are private; only you can see them. if you think others might like to see this, you may want to leave a comment") would help as well. — another thought would be to give the option to submit a note and a comment simultaneously (–though i could see that potentially producing spam), or to have a separate "submit and view word" button to take you to the word's page to leave a comment, rather than back to your list, upon submitting a note.

in any case, i think the personal benefits outweigh potential losses, which seem simple enough to mitigate. :)

"aminals" was most certainly intentional! i see you're unfamiliar with enthusiastic metathesis.

i think it would be neat if we could add a note beside each word on our lists (private, i'd think, so not to take the action away from comments) to serve as little reminders, directly on the page, for quick-reference (e.g., definitions or pronunciations you tend to forget, associated quotes, synonyms, "this is a good word to call bob," etc. — without having to put redundant/only personally relevant things in comments or having to click on each individual word). people with unwieldy lists and those with a focus on vocab-building would find this particularly useful! — or, well, i can confirm that one person would. :)

i took a few minutes to see if i could whip up a decent-looking example (wordie's all nice and clean; i wondered what might be a way that wouldn't disturb the flow of things), and came up with this:

drop.io/wordienotes (—the .html file's the example, and the .txt file has the only snippet of html i really messed with. notice the blue-grey of any links to other words within notes! the rest of the text is the same grey as the dividing dotted lines.)

ha! not five sentences into this article and all i could think of was this list (er, article).

The actor who plays the Joker in a blockbuster 2008 movie is gone. The cartoonist who created the Joker in 1939 is still around. He's Jerry Robinson, and he thinks the late Heath Ledger's acting turn in "The Dark Knight" is "a tour de force."

"A brilliant performance," said Robinson, 86, when E&P reached him by phone at the currently running Comic-Con in San Diego. "Very nuanced."

what i posted is just one book's embellishment (—which now, upon re-reading, seems much stranger than it initially appeared, for some reason.. my apologies).or do you mean the egg in general? google is your friend.

webster's (1828) makes this keen observation: "...as distinguished from oviparous, producing eggs, as fowls. if fowls were viviparous, it is difficult to think how the female would fly during preganancy."

I will slur, and heel, and hem and haw..I will eat a monkey paw..when you call me up, and command me to come over to your housefor sex and tea biscuits..I shall clandestinely drop my cummerbund down the dumbwaiter chute.Lutes will serenade us like liquid lemonade,you will glisten, like newborn snow,and I will listen, like a clairvoyant nipple clamp.It will be sex like nobody has ever had it before in the history of postmodern lovemaking:It will be sex, even if it isn'tIt will be sex, even if only in theoryEven if it's only pantomimeEven if it's just a memory, or a dreamor a symphonic approximation..after a summer of autonomous sodomy and National Geographic specialsabout pretty animals that use other little animals as foodby eating them, on television..But we shouldn't even watch television!We should just have sex:epoch-making, earth-shakingteeth-chattering, dish-clatteringfish-frying, eye-poppingnever-stopping, bunny-hoppingtoe-tapping, Joseph Papping sex —Shakespeare-in-the-park kind of sex!D-train-ride-to-Coney-Island-vacation kind of sex!Clandestine-in-the-airplane-lavatory kind of sex!Olympic marathon sex!All the different ways that we feel like having sex, we shoulduntil we grow old, and bored, and disillusioned*.Then, let us rekindle our feelings,forget our despair and our celibate nonsense,and do it like bunnyrats 'til the cows come home to roost.So call me sometime, and let's have sex.

hm. since the suffix is only -ista, -n- is presumably only there to resemble fashionista, and both wordage and wordiness are real english words, i.. don't know. popular use says 'wordanista,' 'wordinista,' then 'wordonista.' i wonder if it was shown in writing when stephen colbert used it.

"The ears, or handles, (called by us Maniglions, or Dolphins,) are two rings, of the ƒame metal with the piece, placed as the trunnions, only ƒomething nearer the breech, made in the ƒhape of dolphins, ƒerpents, &c. Through theƒe is put a rope to raiƒe or move, mount or diƒmount the cannon, which ƒuƒpended on theƒe handles ought to be in equilibrio, that is, the breech ought not to be heavier than the mouth."

haha! i don't think it's named for the sound, just the action of puncturing. like.. popping a pimple? (*hork,* indeed!)

it's only in tough skin, and only on the way out, not the way in. (almost a tiny version of the (echo-like?) sound of uncorking a bottle of wine.. piercing needles are hollow, to thread the jewelry in behind them). but, in any case, tattoo machines have noisy vibrating parts (in the same way sewing machines do), so no one knows what noises the skin could be making!

miraculin is a glycoprotein extracted from the miracle fruit plant, a shrub native to west africa. the human tongue, once exposed to miraculin, perceives ordinarily sour foods as sweet for up to an hour afterwards. (wikipedia)

that actually sounds pretty fun -- i've never really thought about this before, but people don't get enough opportunities to push off of things with their feet while not standing! the only two i can think of are playing "this swively-chair is now a means of transportation" and giving small-enough people airplane rides on your feet.

what an unusual use of authority! i don't recall many public humiliation policies from the schools i've gone to.ha, "no swearing" is always one of the first rules instated in certain drinking games, for that very reason. it works even better on the imbibed.

without a doubt, "skin-popping" is the most unsettling slang term for shooting heroin i've come across. (and if you've gotten certain body piercings, or been around them being done, you know that it does pop and ohgod.)

a preservative against poison, and a cure for the plague; a panacea. the shell of a new egg being pricked, the white is blown out, and the place filed with saffron or a yolk of an egg mixed with saffron. (infoplease.com)

a great citation on wiktionary:"Not since the year 17--, when milord Castlebrilliant's curricle was whirled to sea with her ladyship within, had there been such vehement weather."- Ronald Firbank, Valmouth (1919)

ha! (i thought of going off into a little side-note on being uncomfortable with eating recognizably fleshy things since pondering the fact that we're all meat, and rightfully horrified by the thought of roasted people.. but didn't.)

seems anti-pregnancy measures employed by intellectuals (who realize they don't want or shouldn't have children at the moment) tending to be birth control pills and condoms rather than wishful thinking is somehow working against us! (well, the world.)

my best friend growing up was catholic; her mother had one of these. i think the charge was one quarter. (now, it makes me think of "ten in the swear jar," a band i only know of through a song they covered.)

but everyone and their mother has a blowtorch! and their little brothers are setting prostitutes on fire with blowtorches in grand theft auto.

blowlamp makes me think of some sort of hand-held, elongated (as a glowworm) glowblowfish that puffs out poofs of bright, fiery gas from its angry little fishyface. and i like words that are likely to see at least one reply of, "the what? who?"

nicely evocative of the quality those with very little body fat have in common with a comparatively clean drawing: all the sketchy bits carefully erased, leaving well-defined, tight, liquidy lines. (i would generally say this more of men.)

camaïeu (or en camaïeu) is a technique that, without regard to local or realistic color, employs two or three tints of a single color to create a monochromatic image. (when a picture is monochromatically rendered in grey, however, it's called grisaille; when in yellow, cirage.)

i just have to say that googling this has yielded two of the most sublime webpages i have ever come across(!) — onomasiology online and the historical thesaurus of english. ..at this point, everything else i have to say is some mixture of expletives and gushing, so i'll skip that.